'Walking Dead' Might Have Fixed One Hell Of A Plot Hole

Buckle up, peeps, because a lot happened on Sunday night’s “Walking Dead” episode, “The Big Scary U.” We learned some crucial aspects of Negan’s (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) backstory, as it was revealed that his one big regret was not being able to kill his wife when she turned into a zombie.

We learned some crucial aspects of Negan’s (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) backstory, as it was revealed that his one big regret was not being able to kill his wife when she turned into a zombie. Then Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Daryl (Norman Reedus) went all fisticuffs after the latter wanted to use the explosives they found to blow a hole in the Savior headquarters. (The explosives end up going off, so that debate settled pretty quickly.) Finally, Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) and Negan had to team up and cover themselves in zombie guts to get out of a trailer surrounded by walkers. Gross, bros.

But who really cares about all that? Toward the end of the episode, Rick is on his way to see the junkyard group, aka the Heapsters, to make some sort of a deal, and he sees a freakin’ helicopter flying overhead.

Historically, helicopters haven’t been welcoming symbols on “The Walking Dead.” For instance, in the Season 3 episode “Walk With Me,” a helicopter crashes, and the Governor (David Morrissey) and his people end up killing the surviving pilot as well as his fellow soldiers. In the Season 4 episode “30 Days Without an Accident,” a wrecked helicopter falls through the roof of a supermarket.

We don’t know whether this latest chopper is a good sign or not for Rick, but it’s great for the show, since it may have fixed a plot hole that dates back to last season.

View photos

In the Season 7 episode “New Best Friends,” we get to know Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) and her junkyard group. During the episode, fans noticed an unusual object in the sky behind Rick as he stood on a pile of junk.

The general consensus seemed to be that the object was a real airplane that had mistakenly made it into a shot used on the show. In other words, a hilarious error. Because if the inclusion of the plane was purposeful, it’d constitute a big plot hole for the show, since Rick and his group wouldn’t just ignore an aircraft this late in the apocalypse.

Well, with the latest episode’s revelation, it’s feasible that the UFO was actually a helicopter.

Yes, given the shot of the helicopter in “The Big Scary U,” again seemingly in the vicinity of the Heapsters, the inclusion of a flying object in Season 7 could have been intentional. Perhaps Rick really did just miss it.

Or, if it wasn’t intentional back then, the recent helicopter sighting could be a cover-up for the earlier mishap.

We asked Jadis herself about the Season 7 object recently, back when we only thought of it as a plot hole. McIntosh told us, “I can’t say anything. You either talk about a studio screw-up or you talk about a possible thing that might be part of a story, so either way I’m not doing the show justice.”

Was it “part of the story”? For now, the mystery of the helicopter continues ...

Speaking to Yahoo Entertainment, executive producer Denise Huth brought up how the helicopter is also a callback to one that Rick saw in the pilot and added, “We’ll see where that goes, but, yeah, the helicopter is a pretty exciting little thing there. That could mean all sorts of things.”